Wow – I really didn’t think it’d take so many posts! And again, this is mostly for my benefit, so I remember what I did. Of course by now it’s kind of a distant memory. Oh well, can’t win them all! When we got to the airport, one of the first things we saw was this armilla. It was a … Continue Reading →

Whew, our last day in China! Doug hadn’t gotten to see the Summer Palace, and I’d rushed through it, so we headed there Saturday morning, since our flight wasn’t til evening and we had lots of time. Here’s a little info about the Summer Palace:

Last time I posted, it was about Tiananman Square – which is right next to the Forbidden City. You have to go under the portrait of Mao to get in. I’m just going to cut/paste a little bit of stuff here from Wikipedia: The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the … Continue Reading →

Saturday morning (wow, we’re actually on to Saturday!) we took a tour to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Sean, our previous tour guide, gave the tour, which was great. We didn’t have a huge group – which was good because The Forbidden City is easily the most crowded of all the places we went. We had thought we might … Continue Reading →

Note: I did a blog post on the Ancient Observatory for work, so I thought I’d just re-use it, since it made things easy! :-) * * * * * I just got back from a trip to Beijing, China, which was a very interesting experience. Beijing seems to me to be a study in contrasts – ancient, yet very … Continue Reading →

Doug took Friday off his conference and we headed for the Temple of Heaven in the morning. We had breakfast as usual. By now I was mostly having friend eggs or omelets. I discovered they had what was essentially won ton soup. It was really good! Another morning, I thought they had it, but it had shrimp in it and … Continue Reading →

Thursday night was the banquet. We met up with Sharon and Dave to take the buses a long drive into Beijing to a hotel. We were expecting better food than we got. We did drive by the Drum tower on the way there…

Wednesday afternoon was our trip to the Great Wall. And it was pouring. The section of the wall that we were going to is the Badaling Great Wall. It’s one of the closest to Beijing, if not the closest. It’s also the most touristy and for me didn’t really have the feel of the Great Wall. It was like Disney’s … Continue Reading →